EOS M50 Mark II Am I overshooting?

[ochia03]

I shoot high school sports fairly often (with an m50 mkii and 70-200 f/2.8 l is), and I feel like I'm overshooting, but I'm not sure if I actually am. I average somewhere around 1500-2000 photos per game, but usually delete about half of those because they're completely out of focus, the person's out of the frame, or they have their back to the camera. Is this too many shots to be taking in a ~90 minute game? It feels like so many photos, but I usually only end up with around 100 that I like a decent amount from the game.

[Waddizzle]

I would not think so.  No one has a 100% keeper rate.  It is normal for a percentage of your photos to come out less than ideal.  

I do not think your total number of files is unusual either.  If you’re using continuous drive mode, then a one second burst may yield 5 images, let’s say.  If you do that 400 times over the course of an 80 minute game, then that is about 5 bursts per minute, each lasting a second, for a total of 2000 files.

[wq9nsc]

I have been doing this for some time so my keep percentage is higher.  I shot a HS soccer match yesterday and took 821 images between two 1DX III bodies and I will upload 271 of them to an album for the team.  The percentage uploaded is a bit higher than usual because several of our starters were out with injuries and we had a less than stellar opponent so a lot of girls got playing time who rarely do,  I went heavy on photos during what for many will be their one big game this season.

As you get more experience, you will get better at not capturing images that won't be used because of composition (i.e. players with back to the camera) and you may be able to tweak camera AF setup along with your own technique to reduce OoF shots over time.  There is nothing wrong with taking a lot of shots except when:

1.  You start using quantity as a crutch which reduces the actual number of high quality captures.

2.  You get buried in selection/editing.

The servo AF system of the 1DX family is stellar but I still got maybe a dozen shots yesterday where the player of interest wasn't in sharp focus.  That was totally operator error where I didn't put the selected part of the focus array where it needed to be.

I won't use a few otherwise good shots because some of the opposing team members did have their backs to the camera during a shot and some of their uniforms were a bit on the too short side.  If one of those had been a critical shot instead of just an "decent keeper", I would have cloned some more material onto their uniform 🙂

With a digital camera, everyone tends to get a little trigger happy when shooting sports until they gain more experience.  Even with a very fast frame rate (my 1DX III bodies will shoot sustained 16 FPS RAW bursts), most sports are still timing critical.  I leave the camera bodies in high speed drive mode but only a tiny percent of the images I capture during a sports event are part of a multiple capture sequence.  When I first started shooting volleyball, after the first 10 minutes I put the cameras in single shot mode which forced me to do a much better job of following the action and getting my timing down for the sport.  Now I shoot volleyball in high speed drive mode but like other sports, most of my captures are one at a time.

Timing is a LOT more difficult with the slight lag time with the display in even the best of the mirrorless  cameras.  I have tried shooting sports with Nikon's best which has less viewfinder lag than any current Canon mirrorless and I still don't like it compared to the optical viewfinder of my 1DX II and III bodies.

The EVF lag in much greater in your M50 Mark II (I have a M6 Mark II for travel and it has pretty high EVF lag) so you are going to end up with more composition "Non-keepers" because of that factor.  It is very easy for me to time shots with my 1DX DSLR bodies, I tried the Nikon for several test events and never fell in love or even in lust with it primarily because of the EVF versus real time action timing, the other factor is many sports I shoot with both eyes open which is not fun with an EVF system).

Photos below were from a 2 shot burst yesterday at the match.  It would have been a 3 shot burst but an opposing player was in line with what would have been the first in the sequence.  As you gain experience with sports shooting in general and your camera system in particular, you will find your keeper percent increases.  These were shot with 1DX III and EF 70-200 f2.8.

Rodger